The Fun Factory (28 page)

I began to feel oppressed by the weight of expectation pressing down on my shoulders. Time to leave, I thought.

“I need to go and get ready,” I said to Luscombe, who winked conspiratorially.

“Of course, my dear fellow, no need to explain to me. I am in the business, after all. Best of British!”

Later I stood in the wings by myself as
The Football Match
got under way. I was nervous, yes, but confident too. My chief concern was not about the act, which I knew was a banker. It was
whether the Power would be with me now, when I needed it the most.

The Power, you see, was by its very nature a thing only partly under my control. The part of it that derived from my own skill and my own personality, well, that was up to me to deliver. But part of it depended on establishing a rapport with that particular audience on that particular night, and that always carried an element of the unknown.

This is why, in short, so many comedians turn to drink.

Will Poluski was getting some nice laughs as the Villain, more than he was used to since he had now incorporated some of Charlie’s touches, and then there was my cue.

On I strode, out into the lights, out where I belonged, and within half a minute I knew that this was one of those nights when the Power was oozing freely from my very fingertips. The audience positively lapped me up, and enjoyment ricocheted around the auditorium.

This was going to be a good one.

My first scene with Poluski went like a dream. I could see a veritable ocean of happy faces beaming back at me. I picked off the moments neatly, not too showily, leaving something in the bank for later.

The second scene, too, went breezily enough, and I knew the best was yet to come.

Then it happened. A cry, clear as a bell, came from the stalls below me.

“Oi! Goalie! You stink!”

I was stunned at first. I could see the faces looking up at me, and picked out the speaker quite easily. He was looking me right in the eye for one thing, a smug grin on his stupid face. For
another clue, all the people around him had turned to look at him.

I shall never forget that face. The man was large, and his features were ruddy and pockmarked. He was bald on top, and the back of his head was surrounded by a crazed halo of ginger hair. His nose was huge and swollen, and seemed to be divided into two distinct yet uneven lobes, so that – there is no particularly delicate way to phrase this, so I’m just going to say it – so that it looked like nothing so much as a pair of testicles.

My apprehension of this peculiar vision was the work of an instant, as the Power was exercising its particular control over the seeming passage of time.

What the Power does, one of the ways in which it works, is it corrals an audience together, shapes it into one organism with one mind, and then you can take it with you wherever you wish to lead it. That one discordant voice, shouting from the one-and-sixpennies, shatters the fragile illusion. Suddenly it is not one audience in front of you, one single entity, suddenly it is hundreds of different entities with hundreds of different faces, each of whom may have its own separate opinion. It’s like trying to ride three horses at once, and all three want to go in different directions.

The Power, if it is with you, can retrieve this situation. You bend the audience to your will, and mould them together once again. The solo act can address his tormentor directly, and humiliate him or win him over, thus isolating him from the whole or absorbing him into it. For the team player, such as myself on that night, it’s trickier, but still feasible, and I set about it with a will. We continued, and shortly I felt it again, felt the Power emanating from me, embracing the room, caressing it into submission.
Laughter rolled in from the back of the stalls in waves, and I rode it like a bareback rider. Comfort, confidence, control, all returned.

Then it came again.

“Oi! Goalie! You stink!”

I looked out into the stalls, and Mr Testicle-nose had his arms crossed and was smirking triumphantly back at me. Those in the neighbouring seats were beginning to grumble at him, but he was unperturbed.

Yet again I felt the reins yanked from my grasp, but gathered them up again. On I pressed, and the sketch was so reliably funny, and this fellow’s opinion of my performance so unsupported by the public at large, that I soon had them again where I wanted them. There was an extra edge to the laughter now, as if people wished to show this witless, gonad-faced rogue what it was to be lonely.

I was building up now to the climactic part of the scene before the actual match itself begins. It was a nice moment, and required the timing to be just so. Sure enough, right at the crucial split-second there was his rasping bellow: “Oi! Goalie! You stink!”

The joke shattered in pieces at my feet, and so perfectly was it done that I found myself distracted by the sudden suspicion that a deliberate sabotage was being done, and a distraction like that, trust me, is instant death to comedy. Time seemed now to be speeding up for me where before it was supernaturally slowed, and I barely remembered that I was supposed to exit the stage so that Mike Asher as the Referee could begin the cup final. I caught one last glimpse of Testicle-nose sneering at me, and for that moment I wanted nothing more than to just leap down into the stalls and smash his idiotic face in. To my intense gratification, I then saw a
right-thinking individual lean forward from behind the fool and cuff him really hard around the ear.

This pleasant image revived my spirits as I waited in the wings, composing myself to embark upon the final scene, Stiffy the Goalkeeper’s finest hour, listening to Mike introducing the various players one by one. Each attracted a huge roar, and the atmosphere, as ever, was not so very far from that of a real football match. My heart was racing, and a muck sweat was trickling down my spine, but I comforted myself with the thought that from now on Testicle-nose could shout whatever he liked and nobody would be any the wiser.

On I went, to an encouraging roar of my own, and the big match pantomime began to trundle along on its well-rehearsed way. I risked a single glance towards my enemy, but couldn’t pick him out. Maybe someone had sat on him.

Things were once again going well. All my thoughts now were of the special bit of business I had worked out with Billy Wragg. I had tried nothing new so far, but this, if it came off, would draw gasps from the crowd and, I hoped, even Mr Karno himself.

Here came the moment. The ball was loose in the centre of the apron. Billy would brace his leg behind the ball and I would dive at his feet at full pelt. Every time we had practised this there was a satisfying reaction from our colleagues, as there was a really meaty smack. It was a variation on rolling with a punch, really. A really hefty-seeming collision, but nobody got hurt.

The Power was with me again by this time, and I saw the whole thing in every detail.

The ball.

Billy’s big tree trunk of a leg telescoping out.

Myself, leaping, flying through the air.

Billy’s boot, not disappearing behind the ball, but rising up and over it.

Myself, puzzled as I flew unstoppably towards him.

Billy’s boot, with all his considerable weight behind it, crunching into my kneecap, with all my weight behind that.

There was a gasp all right. The collective intake of breath nearly brought the tabs down.

I knew something was terribly wrong. A cloud of pain engulfed me, and the world seemed to grind to a halt. I looked up at Wragg, a malicious gleam in his eye as he followed through. I could see the hairs standing up on his great white ham of a thigh, braced against my knee. Then I looked out into the stalls. Every face I could see had an appalled expression on it. Mouths were open, horrified hands were flying to eyes, blood was draining rapidly from features. I saw one woman gasp and then suddenly lurch forward retching into her handkerchief.

This wasn’t good, not by a long chalk. I hadn’t been in show business all that long, but even I knew that if your audience had started retching then you’d probably lost them. Suddenly I wanted to retch myself, but somehow I gathered myself together, remembered where I was and what I was doing. I dragged myself up – how, I don’t know – with all my weight on my left leg, and I reached down behind and thumped my right leg back into line with a wet sort of crunch.

Flashing lights twinkled madly at the edge of my vision and I felt on the verge of fainting. As I’d thumped it, the knee had made a wet sort of crunching, squelching noise, but everything seemed to pop back roughly where it was meant to be, and gradually my head seemed to clear. Suddenly, stupidly, I began to believe everything was going to be all right. I tried, gamely, to step to my
right and the leg just buckled under me, sending me sprawling. I registered more horrified gasps from those close enough to see the detail of what was going on.

I saw Testicle-nose, mopping his freckled brow with a spotted kerchief.

Looked into his eyes.

And then I passed out.

28

THE SOCIALIST

THE
college was a quiet place over Christmas. The young gentlemen had all gone down to celebrate with their families at their various piles, or else in the South of France and even further afield. Only the usual handful of elderly single dons were still in residence to be attended to over Yuletide. Not a deal of point even pinning up the mistletoe, to be frank.

My time with the Karno company would have seemed like a strange, far-off dream, were it not for the stud marks from Billy Wragg’s boot on my knee, and the nine-inch scar running North-South where the surgeon had opened up my leg to root around in there for the halves of my shattered kneecap. Not to mention the crutch I still needed to hobble about on a whole month and a half later.

So there I was, back in the ivy-clad embrace of college life, and back in the bosom of my family. Not that they made a deal of a fuss about it. When I first arrived back, I limped painfully into the kitchens to greet my mother, who was just then engaged in making several hundred mince pies, by the look of things, each of
which would bear an imprint of the college crest, and she looked up, smiled and said: “Hullo, dear,” then carried right on with her work. I wondered if she’d even noticed that I’d been away for a couple of years.

I found my brother polishing shoes, and he squinted semi-curiously at the crutch I was leaning on.

“Hurt your poor little leg, is it?” he said with withering mock concern.

“Broke it,” I replied, not particularly wishing to go into details.

“When I was fighting the Boer,” Lance said, without a pause in his shoe shining. “Bloke standing next to me had his leg shot clean off, and he still drove off the bastards with an empty gun and a bayonet. Hopped after them, he did, screaming like a banshee.”

“Oh?” I said nonchalantly. I was secretly impressed, as Lance very rarely spoke of his time in South Africa.

“Yeah,” he said. “So don’t be such a cissy.”

Welcome home, Arthur.

My father was delighted to have me back at the college, thus, to his way of thinking, proving that he had been right all along and the theatre was “something I needed to get out of my system”. He was planning to have me back in harness for the start of the new term in January, and to that end was diligently working on my fitness. The doctor had told me that I should be perfectly mobile again once I had built up the muscles in my leg that had wasted away through forced inactivity, and what better way to accomplish this, my father reasoned, than resuming college rounds?

And so I found myself every morning, noon and night limping
around the old circuit, past the still-ghastly Wren chapel, past the red-brick library, past Pitt the Younger, past the Master’s Lodge and its lily pond, down to the New Court that was older than many a college’s Old Court, back up under the arch between the kitchens and the dining hall, and back to the fireside at the porter’s lodge.

As I walked I pondered over and over again the same question: what the hell
happened
?

I had only my own vague shadowy remembrances and a smattering of anecdotal evidence to go on as I struggled to make sense of it all.

After I passed out at the Oxford I was carried from the stage unconscious, thus missing the traditional cry of: “Is there a doctor in the house?”

There was, apparently, a deal of confusion as to what would happen then. At that point there were over a hundred people on the stage, twenty-two footballers and eighty supers, not to mention my pal Mike the Referee. Kent and Keith, a right pair of banjo-toting chancers, saw their chance of saving the day in front of Fred Karno, and were trying to drop the tabs in so they could begin some of their inane crosstalk, but before that calamity could occur, why, what was this?

Another
Stiffy the Goalkeeper pranced onto the stage, in identical costume, but with two fully operational lower limbs, and the sketch, the well-oiled machine, resumed where it had left off and played to its triumphant conclusion almost as if nothing at all had happened.

Yes, Charlie Chaplin saved the day! He was the hero of the hour! My one consolation was that I remained spark out and missed the whole thing.

When I awoke I quickly wished that I had not. The pain in
my knee was excruciating, and to make matters worse I had been laid on a chaise longue backstage just a couple of yards away from what seemed to be a victory celebration.

A doctor had materialised, and he had secured some ether. He was not especially expert in administering it, however – Mike Asher told me afterwards that he suspected the man was actually a veterinarian – so the next few minutes I passed in a sort of dreamlike semi-consciousness, from which I retained only fleeting and impressionistic recollections, such as:

The anxious face of Ralph Luscombe peering over the doctor’s shoulder.

Chaplin being carried around on the shoulders of Fred Spiksley and Jimmy Crabtree.

Karno leaning over me, and saying: “You had yer chance, an’ you blew it!”

Ralph Luscombe in urgent discussion with Alf Reeves, frowning, nodding.

Tilly clapping and smiling, and then embracing Charlie when the footballers finally dropped him to the ground.

The whole crowd of them parting as I hovered magically in mid air and passed amongst them – I appreciate now that I was being carried from the building – and faces looking down at me, some pitying, but most laughing.

The shock of the cold night air as I was bundled towards a waiting hansom.

Wal Pink shaking his head sorrowfully, and saying: “You know, funny thing, I told him to break his leg…”

Loafing against the wall outside the stage door, the malevolent leering face and ginger halo of Mr Testicle-nose, tucking a bunch of fivers into his jacket pocket.

Syd Chaplin glancing furtively at me, and then ducking back into the warmth of the theatre.

Then the ether won its final victory over my senses, and when I woke once more it was the next day, and I was in a hospital bed.

Winter sunlight streamed in through the windows. I looked around and saw several bunches of flowers by my bedside. My right leg was bandaged and plastered from hip to ankle, and itched damnably, although blessedly the pain of the night before had receded. I could not get up and move about, so I resigned myself to lying there waiting for an explanation to present itself, which in due course it did, courtesy of my first visitor, Mr Alfred Reeves, esquire.

“What ho, Alf!” I said feebly, as he hoved into view.

“Good afternoon, Arthur,” Alf said, taking a seat by my bed. “How does it feel?”

“Sore,” I said.

“I’ll bet,” Alf grimaced at the plaster cast on my leg. “Still, it will be right as rain in a month or two, I’m told, and for that you can thank your college chum.”

“Mr Luscombe?”

“Splendid young fellow. He has secured you the very best of care from a specialist surgeon who it seems is an old friend of his family, so things could be much worse.”

I nodded. “He’s a good sort. And is he … well, is he
paying
for all this, too?” I waved my hands to indicate the hospital room, which was well above the average, in my estimation.

“Oh, by no means,” Alf said. “He offered, but it was not necessary to trouble him.”

I frowned. “Who then? The Guv’nor, I suppose? Takes care of his own?”

“Wrong again,” said Alf. “No, any and all bills are to be sent, at her express instruction, to Miss Marie Lloyd.”

Well, I was flabbergasted. I had never met the lady, although I knew her by sight, of course, for hers was one of the most famous faces in the country.

“What?” I said. “But why on earth would…?” And words failed me. Alf fixed me with a glistening gaze, apparently moved by what he had to say.

“It took a deal of courage to stand up to Karno the way you did, Arthur me lad, and it has not gone unnoticed. Edith is not without good and loyal friends in the world, and they appreciate what you did for her, appreciate it very much. Marie Lloyd is one such, and I am another, and let me assure you that you will find us grateful. There it is, let me not go on about it, for I shall embarrass us both.”

So, it appeared that I had acquired the aspect of a knight in shining armour. No one but myself (and Tilly, of course) knew of the provocation I had for bearding the Guv’nor in his den that day, and the story being put about by good old Alf was that I had taken an heroic and righteous moral stand against my scheming boss on poor Edith Karno’s behalf, with a selfless lack of regard to the damage this might do to my own prospects.

And once I was recovered enough to return to Streatham I found that Charley and Clara Bell could not do enough for me, and Edith herself and Freddie K junior were frequent and attentive visitors. I had cakes, and sweets, and jellied fruits, and endless cups of tea, and plumped pillows, until I began to feel quite the fraud. It began to oppress me, to be honest, which is how I came to consider returning to Cambridge for a spell, and now that I was here it was harder and harder to imagine ever going back.

The new term came around, and the college filled up once again with bright young things. I was finding it easier every day to move around, now, with the help of a cane from the porter’s lodge’s lost property cupboard, even though the knee still looked like a badly made mailbag, improbably lumpy and haphazardly stitched.

I kept my head down and got on with my various duties. I did the rounds, I took over O and P staircases again, I fetched, I carried, I laundered, I swept. I served the port at High Table, although not yet able to manage the heavier trays with any confidence.

I even caught one young gentleman sneaking in after the gates were locked, as Ralph Luscombe had done years – was it years? – earlier. I couldn’t give chase because of the knee, of course, but I did manage to trip the fellow up with my cane and extract gate pence from him.

My father was disgustingly happy about how things had turned out, and rarely passed up the opportunity to share his vision for the future with me. This involved passing on more and more responsibility to me and beginning his own slow easing into a comfortable and prestigious armchair of a retirement, during which he would stroll around the college as a much-loved institution.